So after I totally hosed my whole windows

[jim08127]

installation last night, Don't ask how it was really dumb.

I have been busy restoring it to operating condition. I am trying to reinstall gbpvr .99.5 version cause thats what I was running. I have backups of my config and gbpvr database, and I thought I had a copy of the installer but it seems to be corrupted. Can anyone help me get a copy of that installer version.?

[jim08127]

Oh.... just got it to work. Must have been some weird OS security lock on the file. Back to the project...

[madcat]

Don't ask how it was really dumb.

Why don't ask? those are sometimes the funniest (although painful) stories...

Ok, here's mine.
Somewhere in year 2000, I had two desktops at work, one was Win2k, one win98.
I was jumping force and back, and at the time, I was trying to do something (not sure what it was), which made me do a complete "export" from the regitry, on the win98 machine. I used it to restore the registry after changes (bad idea already, but never mind, my main machine was the win2k).
Reminder - back in win98 and win2k, when one double clicked on a ".reg" file, there was no confirmation, or sanity check _before_ the import. It was just imported into the registry. Ok, you are guessing now...

So, in all my excitement, I double clicked on the ".reg" file that came from the win98, but on the win2k machine... I just meant to select it, but it slipped. two clicks.
You should try it sometime. It's not that the win2k was dead immediatly. But it was eventually.

This actually made me write a small util and associate it with ".reg" extension, that will ask you to confirm yes/no, and only if "yes" was selected, run the actual regisgtry import. XP has it already built in...

[lajams]

Since you mention don't ask:

Some years back I bought a new hard disk, and was proceeding to ghost my OS disk to the new drive. After it was done, I unplugged my new drive and plugged it into the spot where my old drive used to be. I rebooted and got no OS found. Hmmmm....so I plugged in the old drive and rebooted....no OS found. I'll leave it to you to guess what I did wrong. Lol!

[madcat]

Since you mention don't ask:

Some years back I bought a new hard disk, and was proceeding to ghost my OS disk to the new drive. After it was done, I unplugged my new drive and plugged it into the spot where my old drive used to be. I rebooted and got no OS found. Hmmmm....so I plugged in the old drive and rebooted....no OS found. I'll leave it to you to guess what I did wrong. Lol!

Ouch. At least I had access to the data files...
Yep - for sure some of the scariest moments for me WRT computers are ghosts and alike. I try to use volume labels, not same size disk, etc. Always a scary moment, when you hit that "go" button...

Good one - keep them coming!

[jim08127]

Ok more info,

Basically, I went to upgrade my nforce 4 system drivers, used the latest release from Nvidia as my mobo mfg hasn't updated them in a while. Why? I dunno know, things were working pretty well actually. :p

So then I started having a network controller problem, on reboots the network showed a cable disconnected message. I tried to unistall and reinstall etc, couldn't undo the damage. I did not use windows restore functionality, I actually don't trust it much. In this case it would have been a good choice probably.

So then I tried to manually remove anything nvidia that that the uninstall didn't remove.

There's a driver for serial ata called nvata.sys. That was one of those I deleted. Couldn't boot up anymore.

I tried to use system repair console to put it back but couldn't find this file anywhere on my system or on the installation media. (Later I did find it on the scsi raid floppy but it is called nvatabus.sys, same file apparently.

A repair windows installation didn't work! :eek: Never had that happen before.

So I clean installed, but with with the leave files in place option, essentially it only replaces windows system files.

The problem above was having to do with copying files from the former obsolete identity/profile to a new one. To solve the issue I used the nt backup utility to restore to alternate location without security info.

Don't try this at home!

[Ted the Penguin]

here is a good one, that took myself and a bunch of people on other forums a while to figure out...

so I got a new motherboard... wanted to try to boot my old windows install (for fun, I know it would have been really unstable) so I throw the drive in, try to boot... nope, I forget the error but it was something like OS not found.

So then I try to boot my linux install, that worked... made me confused. so I keep going, try a fresh install of windows. CD boots, formats, copys files... reboots... OS not found!!

ok, so I did that a few times... same result. it was really freaking me out that linux was booting fine... made me overlook stuff. very simple stuff.


so a anyone guess what was happening yet?

I did not have the BIOS set to access the drive in "Large" mode, so when it went to look at my 80GB+ windows partitions, it didnt work so well. but my linux install was smaller, 10GB or so.

Yeah, a single BIOS setting, kept me from doing anything for about a week... and I felt so dumb at the end.

[jim08127]

It would have been so easy to avoid my mishap. I could have saved a backup copy of the files I wanted to delete on the root drive. I could have searched the registry for that file and determined better how to force an uninstall or driver change. Guess I was in a hurry and feeling bold. Cie la vie.

[jim08127]

here is a good one, that took myself and a bunch of people on other forums a while to figure out...

so I got a new motherboard... wanted to try to boot my old windows install (for fun, I know it would have been really unstable) so I throw the drive in, try to boot... nope, I forget the error but it was something like OS not found.

So then I try to boot my linux install, that worked... made me confused. so I keep going, try a fresh install of windows. CD boots, formats, copys files... reboots... OS not found!!

ok, so I did that a few times... same result. it was really freaking me out that linux was booting fine... made me overlook stuff. very simple stuff.


so a anyone guess what was happening yet?

I did not have the BIOS set to access the drive in "Large" mode, so when it went to look at my 80GB+ windows partitions, it didnt work so well. but my linux install was smaller, 10GB or so.

Yeah, a single BIOS setting, kept me from doing anything for about a week... and I felt so dumb at the end.

Thats certainly one that would have stalled me too. I usually assume anymore that the drive parameters are auto-detected. Now back in the old days...

[Ted the Penguin]

Thats certainly one that would have stalled me too. I usually assume anymore that the drive parameters are auto-detected. Now back in the old days...

yeah, it stalled basically everyone I asked. and I have alot of friends who are geeks as well. but hey, it feels good to have other intelligent people say that my problem wasnt obvious, makes me feel less dumb

as for those "old days" well, I started building computers 3 years ago (wow I thought it was longer than that). I had been tinkering with my parents machines for a while, but never built one from scratch.